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King Lear

[ leer ]

noun

  1. a tragedy (1606) by Shakespeare.


King Lear

  1. A tragedy by William Shakespeare about an old king who unwisely hands his kingdom over to two of his daughters. The daughters, who had flattered Lear while he was in power, turn on him; their actions reduce him to poverty and eventually to madness. His youngest daughter, Cordelia , whom he had at first spurned, remains faithful to him.


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Example Sentences

“Nothing will come of nothing,” snapped King Lear at his one loving daughter, as if he had just been reading Aristotle.

At which point he settles into his late memoir years, graying like King Lear.

His stage credits include Richard II, Hamlet, King Lear, Hedda Gabler, Crime and Punishment, The Seagull, and Terre Haute.

In "King Lear" the persons represented are indeed placed externally in opposition to the outward world, and they struggle with it.

It's like King Lear throwing off his clothes in the storm because his daughters turned him out.

The enumeration of plants is quite as unsuitable to so tragical a scene as the description of Dover cliff in King Lear iv.

In King Lear we seem to come upon something very definitely historical, but I am not able to say what it is.

Thus we may still find in King Lear the usual scheme of an ascending and a descending movement of one side in the conflict.

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